December 2018 – Ojai Valley Green Coalititon

The Ojai Valley Green Coalition Presents: Workshop Series at the Ojai Community Demonstration Garden

Water: Cycles, Consumption & Design

Saturday January 5th, 10-3pm

Take a walk with Dr. Andrea Neal, Bert Rapp and Connor Jones “from our faucets back to the watershed.” A day dedicated to understanding water, hosted in the City of Ojai Community Demonstration Garden. We will have a presentation in Help of Ojai’s Kent Hall, Q & A brown bag lunch, followed by an educational walk in the garden.

Presentations and discussions lead by:

Dr. Andrea Neal

Scientist/Entrepreneur

Over the last decade Dr. Neal (“Dr.Dre”) has become an innovator in disruptive businesses that help protect, preserve, and monitor our natural resources. Dr. Neal takes a system approach to problems, integrating multiple disciplines and networks to develop solutions. Dr. Neal was first introduced to interdisciplinary research, while at Purdue University, and fell in love with combining biological sciences with physics and engineering. Her current company Primary Water Resources, LLC is working on locating, securing, and distributing ground water resources to assure safe, clean, affordable drinking water for people and our agriculture production resources.

Bert Rapp

General Manager of Ventura River Water District

Bert Rapp has been a long time resident of Ojai for 38 years. He holds a Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Bert has spent 5-Years working with the Ventura County Watershed Protection District working on levee design, river hydraulics and hydrology. Bert worked for 20 years with the City of Fillmore as the City Engineer/Public Works Director focused on potable water system, sanitary sewer system, storm water treatment and management, traffic control, street maintenance, and flood control. Bert has been fearlessly leading Ventura River Water District as General Manager for 7 years.

Connor Jones

Permaculture Designer and Founder of East End Eden

Connor Jones is a certified permaculture designer and teacher with a lifelong fascination for ecology, anthropology, and traditional food systems. As a child he marveled at the wonders of nature in immersion with it and in small assembled ecosystems created at home. Later in life farming, and his love for ecology began to merge with the introduction to permaculture design. His discoveries led him to the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia at the age of 18 where he became certified to design and teach. Since then he has founded East End Eden a 10 acre family operated permaculture demonstration site in Ojai, California where he teaches regular workshops and offers mentorship opportunities through farm work trade positions. East End Eden is also a nursery for varied perennial crops well suited to the bioregion. Connor also has a permaculture design and consulting company that offers clients sound advice for improving their yields and land value through applied ecological design.

Where: Ojai Community Demonstration Garden

When: Saturday, January 5, 10am-3pm

Biking: There is a bike rack to lock up your bike.

Parking: Please Park in the lot on S Blanche S and W Santa Ana St. Or the Help of Ojai parking lot.

What to bring: Pad of paper, pen/pencil, refillable water bottle, and wear comfortable shoes.

We will NOT be providing lunch for this workshop. Please bring one with you.

We will have a water bottle refill station.

This special workshop is hosted and sponsored by The Ojai Valley Green Coalition, The City of Ojai and Ventura River Water District.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

Thomas Fire 1st anniversary: Before and After photos

This evening one year ago, my wife called me outside to see the full moon and the ominous orange glow on the eastern horizon. It was my first glimpse of the Thomas Fire and we evacuated the following day. At the time I was working as interim executive director for the Green Coalition and my week was full of travels in and out of the valley, information sharing on social media and the many other fire related tasks that consumed us all. I had very little time to take photographs. A year later I have begun to remedy that and I’m glad to share these photos from before and after the fire from around the valley that show its impact and recovery.

Kennedy Ridge overlook

The trail up to Kennedy Ridge through the Ventura River Preserve has been one of my favorite hikes since moving to the valley six years ago. In 2014 I this photo of my father looking north and east from the rocks by the first mile marker bench just after the spot where the trail first crests the ridge. It shows the beautiful oak tree (on the right edge of the photo) that nestled among the boulders and shaded the overlook. It was an especially welcome rest spot on hot days.

Here is the same view with a landscape crop showing some of the oaks in Kennedy Canyon just north of the ridge.

I returned with a friend to this spot for the first time last week and the oak tree that was nestled in the overlook is charred and fallen. While a few sumac and other plants in the chaparral below the overlook are recovering, the difference in the plateau below the overlook is dramatic.

Here is a wider panorama of Kennedy Canyon (looking north from the ridge) running all the way from White ledge peak to the valley below:

Wills Canyon

Early on a September morning in 2013, I biked up Wills Canyon and captured one of my favorite photos from around the Ojai Valley. The canopy of oaks branches intertwine with each other to greet the rising sun.

When I returned to this spot Thanksgiving weekend, the changes were so dramatic it was hard to find the right spot from which to take the photo. I realized that the two most prominent trees in the foreground of the photo had been taken by the fire. I had to use the trees in the background of the original photo to orient myself.

Oak on Dennison Grade

My final before and after photos shows one example of the remarkable resilience I have seen in oaks all over the valley. Many of these magnificent trees were reduced to blackened silhouettes by the fire. I captured one of these oaks along the 150 coming down Dennison grade on Wednesday, December 6, 2017, less than 48 hours after the fire started. OVGC board present Severo Lara and I were driving around the valley checking in on the impact of the fire and acrid smoke which was everywhere.

When I returned to visit this oak a year later, its trunk was still blackened, but half its crown was a vibrant green and I could see other oaks around it recovering as well.

May we all continue to find resilience and recovery in the coming year.